Kerry James Marshall One True Thing Meditations on Black Aesthetics

February 6 – April 25, 2004 K ERRY J AMES M ARSHALL IS BEST KNOWN FOR HIS MONUMENTAL FIGURATIVE REMINISCENT OF TRADITIONAL E UROPEAN HISTORY AND

NARRATIVE . HIS SUBJECTS STEM FROM HIS EXPERIENCES AS AN

AFRICAN AMERICAN, WHICH HE SAYS ARE ROOTED IN THE SOCIAL BIOGRAPHY

OF HIS UPBRINGING: “YOU CAN’T BE BORN IN B IRMINGHAM, , IN 1955

AND GROW UP IN SOUTH CENTRAL [] NEAR THE B LACK PANTHERS

HEADQUARTERS AND NOT FEEL LIKE YOU’VEGOTSOMEKINDOFSOCIAL

RESPONSIBILITY. YOU CAN’TMOVETOWATTS IN 1963 AND NOT SPEAK ABOUT IT.

THATDETERMINEDALOTOFWHEREMYWORKWASGOINGTOGO.” 1

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kerry James Marshall realized he wanted to be an artist influenced the direction he would take as an artist. “If my at a very early age. He pinpoints the defining moment as the teacher Charles White said anything really important to me, it day he was allowed to look through his kindergarten teacher’s was that you have to worry about making the best paintings scrapbook of photographs, Christmas cards, valentines and and the best drawings you can, and that the ideas will take images from magazines and books. It was something she care of themselves.” made available only to the best-behaved students. Marshall remembers looking at that scrapbook and saying: “That’s Before entering Otis full-time as a junior in college, Marshall what I want to do; I want to make pictures like these.” remembers experimenting with all sorts of materials, techniques and subject matter. At this point he was “single-mindedly From that moment on he was focused. He found inspiration focused on learning how to do things.” He says, “it says in everything from comic books to his great-great grandmother’s something about my obsessions with history and process illustrated Bible. During the 1960s he watched John Nagy’s and the mastery exemplified by artists like Leonardo, Learn to Draw TV program and learned how to draw almost Michelangelo and Raphael.” anything by reducing it to simple shapes: cones, circles and spheres. In the fifth or sixth grade he went on a field trip to “I keep going back to artists like Rembrandt or Raphael. the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was his first visit When I look at those paintings, first I see the tonal to an art museum and he says: “Once I learned how to get relationships, the colors, the composition. That then directs there on my own, I haunted the place.” me to the larger issues in the work: passion, the heroic, the sublime — life-and-death issues. The characters The summer after seventh grade he took a drawing class in those paintings could have been anybody. The overall at the Otis Art Institute, where he saw drawings from a book theme of the work went beyond who was being depicted. called Images of Dignity: The Drawings of Charles White. 2 I always wanted to do pictures with black people in them “Until then,” he says, “I had never thought much about that did the same thing: where you recognized who the whether there was a difference between black artists and figures were, and then quickly went beyond that to much white artists. As far as I was concerned, there were only larger issues that implicated more than just the people artists. ...But now I thought about an artist being someone represented. I always wanted my work to operate on that like me. Images of Dignity was a revelation to me. The scale. I never wanted to collapse into parochialism. I drawings were all of black people, done with tremendous didn’t want it to be just about what happened in the black skill and expertise.” Marshall later took a class with White community. It’s parochial if people aren’t able to imagine at Otis while he was still in high school. Meeting White anything beyond the blackness of those figures.” 3

1 Kerry James Marshall, Terrie Sultan and Arthur Jafa, Kerry James Marshall (New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 2000), 113. 2 Charles White (1918-1979) - African American social realist known for his skill as a draftsman and his ability to convey emotion in heroic drawings of African . 3 Marshall, Sultan and Jafa, 66.

Unless otherwise noted all quotes are taken from the artist’s notes on his career and work in Kerry James Marshall (New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 2000). ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

In 1998, in conjunction with his major solo traveling exhibition The subtitle One True Thing refers to Marshall’s concept of organized by the in , Marshall creating new work in each medium: painting, , painted Mementos, a series of large-scale works commemorating printmaking, video photography and installation. It is political and cultural heroes who died during the 1960s, also meant to be ironic — as black aesthetics cannot be including civil rights movement icons John F. Kennedy defined simply as “one thing.” The result is an installation (1917–1963); Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) and comprised of separate elements that together can be read Robert Kennedy (1925–1968). For Marshall, the 2002 like a book or soundtrack, suggesting the passage of time sentencing of former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank embedded in a sense of place. Cherry in the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham church in which four African-American girls were killed signaled In the first section of the exhibition, Marshall reflects on the end of his artistic chronicle of the civil rights movement. historical events and cultural traditions that have shaped the lives of today. Works such as Wake and The last painting in the Mementos series is included in this Untitled (Boat) refer to the Middle Passage — transatlantic exhibition, the first significant showing of Marshall’s work voyages between Africa and the Americas during the slave in five years. Installed at the entrance to the gallery, trade. There are also works that Marshall describes as Memento #5 2002, literally and metaphorically closes the sentimental and romantic odes to Africa as a source of black curtain on this period in Marshall’s work and marks the culture and creative inspiration, such as Africa Restored and beginning of his exploration of black aesthetics. Africa (Yin/Yang). Other works such as SOB, SOB present a wistful yearning for pre-colonial Africa or, as in the case of The term “black aesthetics” first emerged in the 1960s within Vignette, suggest that the Afrocentric desire to return to an the movement as a way to raise awareness original state of harmony with nature is naively idealistic. for black rights, foster black cultural pride and develop strategies for African Americans to participate more actively Alongside these works honoring blackness, Marshall places in the mainstream of U.S. society. The Black movement, works he sees as topical meditations on the many challenges an outgrowth of the Black Power movement, took the in the U.S. surrounding race, discrimination and affirmative concept further, creating a set of standards for music and action. Dailies is a series of drawings in newspaper-comic literature from an African-American perspective. format that continue Marshall’s Rythm Mastr series in which an urban superhero battles the forces of evil by calling forth Marshall extends this concept into the visual arts by drawing and harnessing the power of ancient Yoruba deities. Set upon the rich layering of language, music and art characteristic against the backdrop of the fast-track demolition of public of black expression. Like a jazz composer superimposing housing by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), called multiple rhythms and harmonies, Marshall mixes a myriad Plan for Transformation, Dailies tells an epic tale of the of sources to highlight the uniqueness of black culture and struggle between tradition and modernity in African- to advance new interpretations of traditional Western art American culture amid gang violence and social upheaval. forms. According to Marshall, he has tried to “make a visual equivalent to the idiosyncratic, haunting music of Robert Other works in the exhibition present a range of vision Johnson and Howling Wolf and blues that functions and and perception — from unconscious blindness to hallucination resonates the same way as a musical form does.” 1 to awakened consciousness. The massive painting

7am Sunday Morning is a view of South Side Chicago’s you’re trying to create a new alternative tradition or Bronzeville neighborhood as seen from Marshall’s studio. aesthetic of your own.” 2 Once known as the Black Metropolis, a vibrant community of black-owned businesses, Bronzeville has suffered a fate In a recent lecture at MAM, Marshall noted that the history similar to Miami’s own Overtown neighborhood. Marshall of American art lacks the presence of major contributions has made this reality difficult to discern by including an by African Americans yet the history of music in this country optical effect resulting from a glare from the sun that bathes is indebted to the contributions of African-American the scene in a spectrum of color and dazzling light. musicians. By embracing the ambitious undertaking of creating new work in all media, Marshall seeks new ways To comment on the lack of tender or private moments in to articulate ideas and create new paradigms and ways of media representations of African Americans, Marshall seeing. This, according to Marshall, is what the artists who uses a minimalist painting technique of juxtaposing warm have shaped the history of art have accomplished, and and cool tones of a single color to simultaneously reveal what he aspires to do as an artist. and conceal the figures in Black Painting. He also achieves this affect in his photographs, Black Xmas and Black Artist, Lorie Mertes taken in black light. In Color Blind Test he ironically juxtaposes Curator the idea of racial “color blindness” with the concept that being color blind is a physical deficiency. 1 Kerry James Marshall, unpublished interview by Julieanna L. Richardson, In both Miami and Chicago, Marshall extended the 2001, for The HistoryMakers, a non-profit organization in Chicago that exhibition to include works by artists to open the dialogue compiles oral histories of prominent African Americans. about black aesthetics and to create a communal relationship 2 Ibid. among artists. The two South Florida-based artists featured MAM Gallery Notes are based on the artist’s lectures at MAM and on in the exhibition at MAM are Adler Guerrier and Onajide the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Kerry James Marshall Gallery Guide Shabaka. By focusing on an idea — the meaning of black compiled by Tricia Van Eck and Stephanie Williams. aesthetics — as the basis for the exhibition, Marshall has challenged notions about how exhibitions are traditionally Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics was organized, as well as art-world hierarchy and curatorial organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and, curated practices within art institutions. by Elizabeth Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, with Tricia Van Eck, Curatorial Coordinator. Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in honor of Bette and Neison Harris. In works such as Ladder of Success and Sixteen Bar Blues, Additional support is provided by The Joyce Foundation, The Rockefeller Marshall synthesizes recognizable Western art-historical styles Foundation, Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Boeing Company, with imagery associated with the African-American experience. and Loop Capital Markets. Here Marshall is making an obvious “riff” on minimalist works In Miami, the exhibition is organized by MAM Curator Lorie Mertes by Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt by incorporating references to and is supported by MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund. blues music and principles of Kwanzaa to infuse meaning in otherwise impersonal and formal works. MAM’S ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND

Adopting and adapting these styles is important to Marshall. Grand Benefactors Sponsors From his perspective, “If there’s no clearly articulated Ferrell Schultz Darlene & Jorge M. Pérez Tina Hills Arthur H. Rice philosophy of a black aesthetic that can function competitively Joan Reynolds Linclau Raquel & Michael Sheck against what we see as a European model of aesthetic Patricia Papper excellence...you’ve got to demonstrate…an understanding Patrons of the Western European tradition at the same time that Benefactors Christie’s Northern Trust Bank Kroll Associates Nancy & Robert Magoon Donors Roz & Charles Stuzin The Cowles Charitable Trust Sally & Earl Wiener Ella Fontanals Cisneros Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Espirito Santo Bank Foundation, Inc. Stephen H. Aaron I. Fleischman Foundation Cypen, President Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene Nedra & Mark Oren Podhurst Orseck, P.A. Toni & Carl Randolph The Scharlin Family Foundation

101 WEST FLAGLER STREET MIAMI FLORIDA 33130 305.375.3000 www.miamiartmuseum.org

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, Miami Art Museum is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor and the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners. COVER: Kerry James Marshall painting Memento #5. INSIDE RIGHT: Kerry James Marshall, 7am Sunday Morning, (detail) 2003. Acrylic on canvas banner, 120 x 216 inches. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Joseph and Jory Shapiro Fund by exchange. Photos ©Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.